The field of the present invention relates to the field of integrated circuits. More particularly, the invention relates to an integrated circuit having a bus network for communicating between devices of the integrated circuit.
An integrated circuit may have a bus network for communicating between different devices of the integrated circuit. In a free flowing bus network, messages transferred over the network cannot be queued up at the target node of the network. If a message reaches its target node, and the message cannot be downloaded from the target mode, then the message is passed on to another node of the network and continues to flow from node to node within the network until the message returns to the target node at a time when the target node can download the message. This means that the messages can pass the target node several times before being downloaded.